Update of the GFLI Database of Animal Feed Production

LCA Feed database will be available shortly

Feed PEFCR first to be approved by the European Commission

A harmonised calculation method is essential for determining the environmental impact of animal products, such as meat, milk and eggs, in a fair and correct manner.

To this end the global feed organisations have set up the Global Feed LCA Institute (GFLI) to support meaningful environmental assessment of livestock products and to stimulate continuous improvement of the environmental performance in the feed industry.

One of the institute’s projects is to develop a freely available LCA feed database. This free database contains high quality datasets for feed ingredients. The database has been developed by Blonk Consultants in conjunction with the Agri-footprint database (LCA food database) and in accordance with the GFLI methodology. The GFLI database will become the main international source of LCA information on animal feed production and contribute to making the sector more sustainable. The newest version of the GFLI database will be available shortly via the Blonk Consultants Tool Portal.

Update of GFLI database

The first version of the GFLI database was launched in December 2018. Over the last few months the database has been updated by Blonk Consultants and in July 2019 a new version has been published. This version contains environmental impact information on 962 main feed ingredients. The list of deliverables is more condensed than in the first version. This is because start materials, co-products, intermediate products and materials that are not relevant for feed application have been excluded.

The latest additions to the database are:

Canadian crop data on province/regional level for different crops (GFLI Canada project)
Expansion of feed from fish products (GFLI Fish Feed project - under review and can still change)
Various updates and revisions of market mixes and totals

GFLI database

You can download the database via the Blonk Consultants Tool Portal in the formats described below. Each of the 962 deliverables is available in three different allocation options: economic, gross energy and mass allocation.

LCI impact results (Excel format): environmental impact results for all 962 deliverables in all three allocations according to the ReCiPe Midpoint Hierarchy method. This method includes the following impact indicators: Global warming (including Land Use Change (LUC)), Global warming (excluding LUC), Stratospheric ozone depletion, Ionising radiation, Ozone formation, Human health, Fine particulate matter formation, Terrestrial acidification, Freshwater eutrophication, Terrestrial ecotoxicity, Freshwater ecotoxicity, Marine ecotoxicity, Human carcinogenic toxicity, Human non-carcinogenic toxicity, Land use, Mineral resource scarcity, Fossil resource scarcity and Water consumption.
LCI system process data (CSV and ILCD format): LCI system process data are (aggregated) system process data that can be imported into SimaPro or other (LCA) software for further analysis.

Future updates

The GFLI database is under continuous development. Several updates are planned for upcoming versions, including the addition of US processed feed products and Brazilian cultivation data for feed products.

Methodology and guidelines

Detailed information about the methodology, data quality measurement and modelling frameworks can be found in the 'GFLI Methodology and Project Guidelines document'.

GFLI site

Download the GFLI files